The present invention relates to vending machines and, in particular, to vending machines providing personalized postage stamps.
It is a common practice throughout the world to use postage stamps as an indication that postage has been paid for the delivery of a mailpiece. These postage stamps are typically produced and issued by a government agency and procured for use by the general public. The postage stamps can either be obtained at a local post office or can be procured out of a postal vending machine. Moreover, for certain holidays or for certain special events the postal authority often produces a limited number of special edition or commemorative stamps which are distributed for sale and used for the payment of postage or alternatively are saved as a collector's item. These commemorative/special edition stamps are quite popular and generate a significant amount of postal revenue.
Despite the fact that commemorative/special edition stamps are known, personalized postage stamps are not available. That is, it would be desirable to permit a consumer to obtain a postage stamp which can be personally customized in appearance by the consumer. This type of personalized stamp would likely be well received by the general public and a premium could be charged for such a stamp to create additional revenue for the postal service.
A particular form of personalizing a postage stamp which has heretofore never been accomplished would be to provide a postage stamp which included a picture of the individual sending the mailpiece. The postage stamp including the individual's picture could be created at any one of a plurality of independent kiosk/vending machines as will be discussed in more detail in connection with the invention described herein. Thus, the inventive concept set forth in this application provides for the creation of personalized postage stamps anywhere a kiosk/vending machine is installed. The kiosk/vending machine would have a digital camera incorporated therein to take the individual's picture so that the digital image can be combined with a standard postage stamp image thereby creating the personalized postage stamp. One problem in connection with this type of personalized stamp is that the photo which is taken must produce a good image of the individual or else consumers will quickly become dissatisfied if they have to pay for a poor quality image. Potential solutions to this problem are discussed in connection with the preferred embodiment of the invention.
It is also desirable to provide as part of the printed personalized postage stamp additional information about the contents of the envelope. That is, it would be desirable to provide a mechanism in the personalized postage stamp itself which would, at a subliminal level, indicate to the user the nature of the contents of the mailpiece. For example, it would be desirable for the postage stamp to provide an indication as to whether the contents of the envelope were of a serious nature (i.e. business related), a happy nature (invitation, birth announcement), or of a very sad nature (death notice, bill).